Alice Brown

“ Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Dear,—Step back before it is too late. Do not come with us. No good lies that way. Why should you leave your happy island for the grimy streets? There is strange irony, too, in your setting off with us, such wayworn travelers. So might a spangled troup of weary players entice a sleepy child that had only known the lambs and birds, and lain on fragrant hay, to take some part in their ghastly mummery. What should be his fate? footsore, bewildered, to fall beside a wayside ditch, and gasp his breath out in the dusty fern. ”

“ After death he will be content to rest in her arms and become one flesh with her mould. But I—I! O, is it because I am young; and will the days chill out this strange, sweet fever, as they have in him? Two years ago—yes, a year—I had no higher joy than to throw myself, body and soul, into motion: to row, fish, swim, to listen, in a dream of happiness, while my father read old Homer to me in the evening, or we masterfully swept through duets—'cello and violin—that my sleep was too dreamless to repeat to me. And now the very world is changed ”

“ Her hand is gracious, large; it has not that subtile outline of Zoe's, but she uses it as an instrument potent for beauty. Her head is not set proudly, her shoulders are not like the pine-tree, and Mrs. Montrose tells me her clothes are wrinkled and sometimes frayed at the seams. But her face! All the Graces strove for mastery, and threw their gifts at her in a blind contention, so that none of them agree. They simply strive together like a company of angels, ill-assorted, and give you the effect of a lovely surprise. ”

“ Here in this forest is the happy reverse of the world-shield; let conventions also be turned topsy-turvy, and letter-carriers be eschewed for a box of living oak and a cushion of crumbling mould. I will be your playmate, your comrade; not your friend. I hate the word between men and women. It is a mantle for mawkish sentiment, the kind that stalks about solemnly like a Puritan at a play, seeing all and affecting his own superiority. But, an you will, be my comrade only; let the Forest of Arden spring up again greenly, and let us play at simplicity and outspoken joy ”

“ He had the firmest conviction that he could never grow any more; yet an imperative voice within bade him seek the highest out-look in which growth is possible. He had formed a habit of beautiful living, though in no sense a living for any other save the dual soul now withdrawn; and he could not be satisfied with lesser loves, the makeshifts of a barren life. So, turning from the world, he fled into the woods; for at that time Nature seemed to him the only great, and he resolved that Francis, the son, should be nourished by her alone. ”

“ I know myself too well. I am, in many ways, a hard woman. My heart is bedded in a crust of flint, and no daw shall peck at it. But if that armor were worn away, if I did sink my traditions to become all-womanly, if I pinned life and soul and faith and breath to a man—O, I shudder to think of seeing that morning-glow fade into the light of common day. It is such women as I who break their hearts ”

“ But tell me, you who know the lore of men, when we really begin to live, do we always ache so at the heart?
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
My child,—Your questions are delicious. What you felt on reading my letter? Yes, Sir Innocence, it hath a name: Jealousy. 'Tis a very legitimate passion, so I think, but it hath earned in the world a bad repute. You white-armored child! this meeting a soul so dense to its own emotions is like cooling drink in a desert. You complain because I am your senior and a trifle world-worn, and you do not know that you are complaining. ”

“ Then a cry went up, "The raft! the raft!" and they began swimming out, while the women on the bank urged them not to dive, but to wait until to-morrow. I thought I had seen all the sports of young creatures, but I never dreamed of anything so full of happy delight in life as that one girl who climbed on the raft without touching the hand a man offered to help her, and danced about on it, laughing like a wood-thrush gone mad with joy, while the other women shrieked in foolish snatches. Then a man dived from the raft, and another. A woman called from shore, "Don't dive, Zoe, to-night!" ”

“ Francis Hume to Ernest Hume
Dear father,—I will come soon. I can't quite yet. I am sorry you are not well. I will come soon.
To the Unknown Friend
The voices of people about me do hurt me so. I won't see a soul I know, but the waiters asking for orders—O they hurt me so! I shall be like a woman, and scream. I can't see my father yet—not yet. I couldn't bear his face, or his voice. They would be so kind. I must be alone. Yet it is awful for crazy people to be alone. They are so beset by dreams—and faces. I don't think they are real, but still there are faces. ”

“ On the other hand, he was jealously unwilling to trust me there alone; and when I found another man to row me, Pierre came of his own will and took a place in the boat. The day was a heaven of May, the lake untouched. Our oars made its only ripple. It was a strange, still progress. Pierre, dark, silent, a man of thought and experience, brooded all the way, as over vanished things; and the other man evidently held him in too much awe to speak. They landed me without a word. I walked about the spot where the log-cabin had stood, now a blank in the vegetation. ”

“ We should have grown together, twin plants, from the sweet black earth, to twine and blossom and die. But it was not so to be; and therein I see what they call the hardships of life, and against such will I take my lance and shield, and ride forth. I will watch beside my arms, and draw down holiness from heaven, to be worthy to fight for you, and wear your favor. Not worthy of winning you—O, mistake me not in that! No heart was ever humbler than mine before its lady. Yet, as I am a man, my reward must come. ”

“ For you haven't the fortunate palm, my boy; you haven't the look of luck. They that make us have ordained you to grief, and I would for forty shillings that your slaughter came not through me. I will go to town. You shall send me your manuscripts, I will find a publisher, and we will write each other letters—so friendly, so friendly—and when you die with Virginia I will come to the woods and sit by your grave, and sing you little songs in remembrance of the love that was not to be mine. So fare you well; and I wish you only forgetfulness.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Farewell! ”

“ The little observances of love are forgotten, or they degenerate into a meaningless form more pitiful than silence. You grant, I suppose, that there is a higher life to be sought, one of aspiration, or holy companionship in great deeds and truer speech,—but as I live by bread, I doubt whether husbands and wives can keep that track together. You are a young Galahad with Lancelot's heart. I believe in you, I care mightily for you in a certain way; but you are a man, and none of the weaknesses of mankind are foreign to you. ”

“ Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Do not write verse until you fail to express yourself in prose. Verse should glide full-winged over the surface of the waters where the spirit of God lies sleeping. It should deal carelessly with poor things like prepositions and pronouns. They are but the spray-bubbles beaten back by its wings. Your smaller words are staffs falling as regularly and heavily as a tread on a board walk. Your phrases march; they do not fly. ”

“ It is that for which I have lived my twenty years. At last, without warning, my life has flowered, and the fragrance of the blossom intoxicates me, its color blinds. At first I only knew the earth was changed, and that I could never be the same; but I did not translate the knowledge. All the poets had not told me enough; Shakespeare had not prepared me. But last night—do I ever sleep now?—when I lay thinking, thinking, and always of you, my soul spoke and said to me, "So great a thing must be eternal. ”

“ Our public buildings are atrocious, and—and—I could go on for pages, but I spare you. The worst of it is that it may be true. You know how much my opinion is worth. I might as well be a boy of ten for all I can say, judged by experience and comparison; but to me everything in this city is small, disappointing, unbeautiful. Nothing, except the music, fills my ideal of what I thought life would be when I pictured it in my tent. Is life small? Are men pygmies? Or are my judgments naught?
Ernest Hume to Francis Hume
You are right in distrusting your judgments. ”

“ You know enough bird-lore never learned from books to write a thousand St. Francis sermons. Even the fish have told you secrets. I fancy they think you some strange, fresh-water whale not to be accounted for. Tell me about them; and drop this mawkish sentiment caught from books.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
I have read your last letter, but I only half understand you, and I must wholly disobey. For I have learned the meaning of all things created, the sky and the earth, the stars that are the habitations of loving angels, and the worm who seeks his mate. I love you! ”

“ A few geniuses seem to be born full-fledged; I doubt if a nation could be. A man, even a genius, has to learn to use his tools. So does a people. The French are form-mad. I don't wonder. Outer beauty is a subtile poison. Once taste it and you never lose the craving. It is a beautiful zeal, but not always the best zeal. I've been a coward and an absentee about life myself, but I'd rather trust some of those vigorous old pirates like Sir Francis Drake, who went about picking up new worlds like huckleberries, than a carpet-knight on tiptoe at the apex of civilization. ”

“ Zoe laughs at me, and opens her eyes because I have begun to talk of good and bad, of beauty and ugliness. She says I am too apt. It is true that I have done little but study faces since I came. Many are like animals. Some I love; some I hate at once. I have seen three persons who are deformed, with humps on their backs. They have a strange old look, with a queer brightness in the eyes; and when I catch that look on those who are straight and well, I wonder if they are deformed in the soul. ”

“ And hell is not very important. We dig it for ourselves. Let me remember only the things of God. Then I awoke, and Pierre was feeding me. He went out, and I saw the twilight shaft of light strike across the cabin where it used to fall. But I knew everything was changed. The cabin was not real. Only I was real—and Pierre. My soul—was it my soul?—went out of the cabin, and swept across Lone Mountain to the sea, and over the sea and back again. She saw the great earth swing in space. She knew there are many worlds beside. She felt an awe of the vastness of things, and she began to be healed. ”

“ I thought of it last night, and it bore upon me so, grave upon grave—and all the unnumbered dead of all the wars—and I rose to look from my window into the busy, lighted night, and think of men. How they seethe here in crowds. How they hurry up and down, each in his little world, king of that alone, and alien to his brother. It is so strange. I think I should die of loneliness if I had not brought my own with me. But does any one sleep? There is no air! ”

“ Sometimes Francis chopped a little with his hatchet, not to be left out of the play, and then sat by again, smoothing the bruised fern-forests, or whistling back the squirrels who freely chattered out their opinions on invasion. Then came other days just as mild winds were fanning the forest into gold, when the logs went groaning through the woods, after slow-stepping horses, to be piled into symmetry, tightened with plaster, and capped by a roof. ”

“ Those messages will never be told; earth has no speech for them. They are beyond the scope of music. Yet there must be speech for them somewhere. They are like the overtones we cannot hear unless our ears are delicately attuned; and if you, in your tent, were lying in an ecstasy of waiting for them as I in a rapture of sending, then would you not hear? But the thought is too great, too terrible. That would be as if we were gods, to taste no more of earthly chills and languors. ”

“ Is a woman betrayed more lost than a man's soul when it is rejected and thrown back to live alone? Perhaps there is a difference. But this lonesomeness of the heart! If I died, should I still live and be I, bearing my wormwood with me? A life shattered so early! ”

“ The life of Francis Hume began in an old yet very real tragedy. His mother, a lovely young woman, died at the birth of her child: an event of every-day significance, if you judge by tables of mortality and the probabilities of being. She was the wife of a man well-known among honored American names, and her death made more than the usual ripple of nearer pain and wider condolence. To the young husband it was an afflicting calamity, entirely surprising even to those who were themselves acquainted with grief. ”

“ Pretty! poetic! but in plain prose, "I would you were not my elder!" And so would I; for if I were set back those five years, it would give me just five years more to hack away at my plays. I will not say how your moonings and mouthings would affect me; possibly then I might be caught by such pretty sweets. The last question of all: Does the world feel immortal pain at its heart? Frankly, yes. Nobody can be really happy except imbeciles and children; and not they, if they chance to be underfed. But be of good cheer. Only women ache all their lives long, every day of every year. ”